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OOW 2010: Moving forms to ADF

When working with Oracle Forms these days and you’re not satisfied with the application anymore, there are some possibilities you can do:

upgrade

modernize

integrate

migrate

On our OOW session tomorrow(Oracle Forms in the Middle of Middleware, 1pm, Marriott Marquis Room: Salon 9), we will talk about the first three possibilities, upgrade, modernize and integrate.

But today I went to the session of Grant Ronald: Moving from Oracle Forms to Java and Oracle Application Development FrameworkA session about migrating Oracle Forms to ADF.
The strategy of oracle is NOT desupporting Oracle Forms, on the contrary, they’re working on new features for 11g R2.

But when you consider migrating, do it for the right reasons.
Three kinds of reasons: the good, the bad and the ugly

Reasons to choose for migration can be

forms doesn’t meet the requirements anymore

there’s need for re-development

adopt leading edge, modern technologies

Reasons NOT to choose for migration:

there’s a heavy forms investment you don’t want to throw away

happy with data entry (and to my opinion forms is one of the best choices for data entry applications)

Wrong reasons:

forms will be desupported -> A clear answer of Grant Ronald: THIS IS NOT THE CASE!

upgrading your forms application will result in big problems

rewriting the application will save $$$

So migration is an option for your forms application, but Grant stated it several times in his session: DO IT FOR THE RIGHT REASON.

About migrating forms to ADF…
The technologies look similar…
Grant made a comparison between a dish washer and a washing machine.
Both have the same measurements, do similar things(wash something and dry it), etc.
But who puts his clothing in a dish washer? Or cups and glasses in a washing machine?
So thechnologies look similar, but are different:

Java applet <> HTML/javascript

PL/SQL <> Java

Stateful <> stateless

No separation of UI and data elements <> seperate UI and data elements

Do not ignore those differences when looking at migration!

ADF is a framework and does a lot of things for you(like log on to the database, you don’t have to write the code) which is pretty nice.
But hey, Forms does also things for you, it’s also a framework.

You can build applications in ADF that look like forms application and have the same behaviour, but is that the reason to migrate, to work the same way?

When migrating there are some more challenges, eg reusability of table/views, procedures/functions, PLL, triggers. What about forms built-in functions?

So, of course migration is an option for your Oracle Forms application, but ask yourself a question: Why migrate?
Take a look at all the options, before going to migrate. It’s not an easy path to walk…